144. The Myth of Motivation (and What Actually Gets You Moving)

Many of us think we have a motivation problem.

We call ourselves lazy.
We say we’re procrastinating.
We wait to “feel ready.”

But motivation isn’t a personality trait — and it isn’t something you have to wait for.

In this episode, psychologist and art therapist Amy Backos breaks down what 70 years of research actually says about motivation — including intrinsic vs. extrinsic drive, expectancy–value theory, attribution styles, and self-efficacy — and why labeling yourself “unmotivated” quietly undermines your ability to act.

You’ll learn:

• What motivation really is (and what it isn’t)
• Why calling yourself lazy backfires neurologically and psychologically
• The simple formula that predicts whether you’ll take action
• How your internal “story” shapes effort and persistence
• ACT-based cognitive defusion tools to stop believing every thought your mind throws at you
• How to act before you feel ready

If you’ve been waiting for motivation to show up before starting your creative work, this conversation will change how you approach action entirely.

Because you don’t need more motivation.

You need a different relationship with your thoughts.

Transcript

 Would you describe yourself as a motivated person? Do you ever call yourself names like lazy or unmotivated? Do you ever ponder why you are procrastinating getting your to do list done? All of these things are not about motivation. They're actually just thoughts about what is considered a psychological drive. Thinking about motivation and calling yourself names is not about motivation. I want to take a deep dive into what research has described as motivation, what we understand about it. And I've gone back about 70 years, seven, zero years in the literature. And in that 70 years there's been lots of ways of describing motivation. Some of them you've probably heard of. And then more recently, there is a more unifying kind of theory to describe what motivation is and how we can use it. Then I want to teach you how to stop thinking about motivation, procrastination, laziness, using some really simple act diffusion techniques. So in acceptance and commitment therapy, we spend a lot of time focusing on how thoughts are not facts. Calling yourself lazy is not a fact, it's just a name. There is no external jury who can say, oh yes, a lazy person. It's simply an insult. There's not anything really quantifiable about it, so we'll get into that in just a little bit. 

Welcome to the modern creative woman. We are here talking about the art and science of creativity. I'm here every Wednesday, and if you're a woman who is interested in creativity, not just talking about hobbies and not just talking about having a go at the art museum once a month, what I'm talking about is being a creative person and truly engaging in ways that express your human creativity. It is a natural drive to be creative, and when you're creative, you're thinking differently, you're acting differently, you're looking for solutions, and you're finding them in a completely different way. This sounds like you. You are in the right place. I'm Amy, a psychologist and art therapist. I've been doing this for 30 years, and I'm always delighted to guide you through the process of how to bring more creativity into your life. So let's get into this. Let's get this started. Perhaps you've heard of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Let's start with what is motivation. And then we'll get into those details. So motivation is defined as the process where our goal directed activities are initiated and sustained. It's considered a drive. There are five different theories that help us understand motivation. And the first one I want to talk about is intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation is engaging in behavior because it is personally rewarding to you. It's enjoyable in some way. Extrinsic motivation is performing an action simply to earn a reward or avoid punishment. So you may be intrinsically motivated to go for a hike because you find nature beautiful and engaging. You like to have a look at the vista when you reach the top of a hill that's intrinsic, it's inside you. Internal extrinsic motivation might be someone who's going on the exact same hike, but they're doing it to avoid health problems, or they're doing it to try and achieve some particular result, like lower their blood pressure, lose weight. The hike is the exact same, but they're motivated by two different things one, because it's enjoyable, and the other person because they're trying to avoid a negative consequence of bad health. There is a phrase called a motivation without motivation. So you might say, oh, I'm feeling a motivational today. I feel like doing nothing. I have no drive to do a thing. And the absence of this desire or drive to act is kind of a hallmark of depression. Or it's an indicator that there might be depression. But I don't want you to go self-diagnose because you are feeling a motivational. It is not about thinking that you're a motivational or that you are lazy. It is a specific condition. Motivation relates to psychology because it's a process that directs and maintains our behaviors. It's considered really a driving force behind all our human actions, and it's closely linked to our emotions and our thoughts. It is a key factor in mental health when there is a obvious lack of motivation. So just because you have things on your to do list that you moved over from yesterday's to do list. Does not make you a motivational. It's normal to have a list of things that you want to work on. It's also pretty normal to choose some things over others. It's way more fun to go on a hike than it is to sit down and do your taxes. There is even a formula for motivation, so you can start to understand it a little more objectively. This comes through the research of expectancy value theory, and Ickes and Wakefield came up with this concept, did a lot of research on it, and it seems to make a lot of sense. The expectancy value theory is positing that motivation is the product of two things. Your expectation of success times the subjective value that you put on the task. So m equals e times v. Motivation equals expectation times value. This framework is really showing that if either the expectation or the value is zero, motivation is zero. They're predicting that if people are motivated to pursue a task, they are pursuing it because they believe they can achieve it and they find it valuable. They're also factoring a little bit of the cost of the effort. Is it valuable enough to exert the effort? Now expectancy, that idea that you are competent and you are likely to have success in the task is about your thoughts. It's gathered throughout time to maybe you have the information already in your mind. I know how to do this thing. I know how to, um, go grocery shopping. I know how to paint a picture. I know how to do my taxes. Your belief in your competence and your likelihood of success comes from not just these past actions. It comes from how you're thinking about things. The value itself is, how important it is or how much you desire it. Now there's four ways to understand value. I'm going to go into some of these nuanced details, because I think this is going to really help you understand how to relate to your thoughts differently. The first component of the value in this case is the intrinsic value. Will you enjoy it? Can you get value? They call that the attainment value. Is it important for you to do well? Is it important for you to get a good grade? So if I really enjoy French class and I also really want to get a good grade, then I've got high intrinsic value and high attainment value. What else might be valuable? The utility value. How useful is it for this task for now or for the future? So it's really useful for me to keep going to my French class and studying every day, because I spend time in France every summer doing the Modern creative woman retreats. It really helps the more I know French. And finally the the last area of value relates to cost. And that's really like the negative aspects, like how much effort it might take me, the emotional stress it might take me if I'm doing my homework right before class. It also can be a cost of missed opportunities. The less I know about French, the less I'm able to appreciate and understand when I'm there. So all of these four areas of value intrinsic will I enjoy it. Attainment, value. Is it in line with who I want to be? Does it have value for my current or future goals and how high is the cost? So these all go into your value and how likely you are to do something. If it feels like a really low value to clean your house on a Saturday afternoon. It's valuable. It's nice, but there's not really, um, an immediate need to clean the house. It's not like you're trying to earn a grade. You don't have company coming over. It's highly more likely you will redirect that motivation to do something like go for a walk. So in this theory, this first one that I'm talking about, the expectancy value theory, it's about prediction. How well do I think I will perform. And it's about value. I want to add in a little bit of the context here. Your thoughts about it are part of the context. Your feelings about how you've done it in the past all fit in. The expectancy value theory has a lot of practical application, especially in education, and students are more like pushed by their teachers to get some motivation. And so teachers increase motivation by making sure that the assignments and the projects are achievable. Right. So the students build their expectancy. They expect they will do well on their projects. And also teachers can help with motivation by explaining the relevance of the material. Well, this matters because it connects to something else. Learning about this aspect of history will help you build on next year's history class, or it will relate to what you're reading in the news. Here's where we all bump into a loss of motivation. It's when it comes time for decision making. If we believe the cost of doing something is higher than the benefit. We are more likely to avoid a task. So I'm talking to you. If you raised your hand when I asked if you ever called yourself lazy, or procrastinated or called yourself unmotivated. If we perceive the cost to be higher than the benefit, we are way more likely to avoid doing the task. We often don't see how the cost is impacting us, the cost of changing, making changes in our relationships or our jobs. It's high because it leads to a feeling of uncertainty not being able to predict. We have to factor all of those potential costs into when we're thinking about motivation. We may really want to change jobs, but if the cost is fear, we might decide to stay at our current job. So I think it helps to be very realistic about the costs or potential costs that you could imagine when you're making a decision, especially big decisions. Even small decisions are impacted by the cost ratio. Are you with me so far? Let's shift into the attribution based theories of motivation. And this was developed by Wigner. And the attribution based theory of motivation is saying that motivation really is driven by how we might interpret the cause of our past success or failure. Remember when I mentioned that inner context? This is what I'm talking about. People might attribute outcomes like how likely they are to succeed to all kinds of things, their natural ability, how much effort they put into it, how hard the task might be, maybe luck. And we can think about these factors in a couple of different ways. The first is the locus of causality. Remember I mentioned the internal and external locus. It's a little bit like when the cause is on the inside of the person, like your ability or how much effort you have versus if the cause of your success is outside of you. Like luck, the lottery. If you attribute it to a teacher, I had a bad teacher. These internal attributions for failure often lead us to these terrible thoughts and feelings, like guilt and shame. And those external causes of failure might lead us to anger, frustration. The next aspect of the attribution theory is how we are attributing the stability or instability of our success if the cause is constant or changeable, for example, stability. Our effort might be stable. We always put in a good effort, so that feels stable. But something changeable might be related to effort or luck. Here's a surefire way to reduce your motivation is saying things about yourself that are just completely unchangeable. I'm not smart. We're giving ourselves this stable characteristic. It's internal and kind of makes us feel a little bit hopeless. It reduces our future motivation. So just eliminate those kind of statements. When they come up, you can notice them and move on because they're reducing our future motivation. However, if you're thinking about something internal and you're attributing it to maybe this unstable cause, like, I didn't study enough. Well, then the next time you can study more, it really is allowing for future improvement. So those things that you can control versus you can't control internal versus external and how stable or changeable they are. So the last one around attribution theory is about controllability. And this is whether you could have controlled for the outcome or not. Can you control for effort. Yes. Or was the situation uncontrollable? In other words. Oh, you got sick the night before a big presentation or the task was so difficult. No one passed the exam. When someone fails at a class, it's best if they consider that there are future classes that they will do well in. So they would want to consider. All right. Well I'm internally I'm have intelligence. I can keep changing it and growing learning more and it's changeable. I can study in a different way. Join a study group. And I do have control over a lot of things. I did poorly because I was sick the night before a test. It creates a story that's worth telling that allows you to see yourself as succeeding in the future. There's also high motivation and low motivation. So high motivation is really likely to occur when your success is attributed to internal, stable and controllable factors. May you repeat that internal, stable and controllable factors. So you want to start thinking in this way. For example, I succeeded because I'm skilled and I worked hard in my garden. I got the plants to grow by spring and I had tomatoes by summer. Even though luck came into it, the weather came into it. How much rainfall came into it? We want to continue our motivation story by saying, I managed to grow my tomatoes because I put a lot of effort into it. I worked hard at my garden. Low motivation is telling a story that leads to the feeling of helplessness, and this is when we are attributing failure to these stable, uncontrollable and internal factors. That's what we don't want. I failed because I'm not smart. I failed because something's wrong with me. Everyone breaks up with me because I'm a terrible person. Right. All of those lead to a loss of motivation. So you want to be telling yourself these stories that are internal, stable, and that you have some control over things. And when things don't go well, you want to be able to understand the other factors, like the weather was all wrong for tomatoes this year, or I ended up going on holiday and didn't get anyone to water my plants while I was gone. These kinds of things help you understand the context and take into consideration those factors that are, you know, unpredictable. We all understand that there are external factors that are far beyond our control. And this is simply not a meritocracy, where people are rewarded strictly based on merit and ability. There are all kinds of prejudices and discriminations that happen. However, what I'm referring to in the motivational aspects of this attribution theory is about how you tell that story on the inside and being able to tell yourself a story that has a positive impact on you. And when I say story, I don't mean a lie or a manipulation or a denial of the truth. However, I am talking about the way we're interpreting events so that we can persist. There are people who continue and persist in spite of so many setbacks and so many failures, and they are able to do that because of what I described with their motivational impact, that high motivation self-talk. That success is attributed to internal, stable and controllable factors, and failure is considered part of the process. Right? It's not a personal flaw. It's really about, oh, I learned something this time. It's not because I'm a bad person or I did something terribly wrong. It's because I'm learning how to do this and my learning is stable. I want to continue to grow. It's the difference between telling yourself thoughts that help you stay motivated and moving forward, and thoughts that can lead to a really depressed mindset. I'll just mention a couple of the other ways that researchers have looked at motivation. And then we're going to dive into how you can apply this into your own life. We talked about the attribution theory. There's also social cognitive theory that's really focused on self-efficacy as the primary driver of our actions. There's goal orientation theory. There's self-determination theory. And really all of these are focusing on satisfying basic psychological needs autonomy, competence, relatedness, all of these aspects that are promoting our own motivation to engage in a task. Here's where you might want to grab your pen and paper. Diffusing from thoughts is one of the most powerful ways to feel better and feel better fast. Diffusion is the act of noticing thoughts for what they are, and thoughts are merely one neuron firing across a synapse to another neuron and spreading out in this predictable pattern across the brain. What I want to teach you how to do is to diffuse from thoughts about a lack of motivation. In other words, I want to help you detangle yourself from this idea that you have to feel motivated to take action on something. I don't know that motivation is ever necessary to begin a task. You really have a lot of options for how to begin a task or sustain a task when you're halfway through it that are not related to motivation, and they're certainly not related to thoughts about motivation. Pablo Picasso has a lot to say about this. Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working. And it means that rather than waiting for some vague feeling of motivation to strike, you have to begin working to create the environment where creativity and inspiration really can show up. Motivation and inspiration can emerge once you've started a task. It rarely precedes a task in my own experience. Act, acceptance and commitment therapy can really guide us through this process, where we're able to observe our thoughts and not simply believe them as true. So you might even start by acknowledging, oh, I'm having the thought that I'm not motivated. Just recognizing that it's a thought will give you some distance, and that kind of psychological distance allows you to take action based on what's important to you, without having to feel a certain way to start taking action. So I notice, I notice that I'm having a thought about procrastination. I notice I'm having the thought that I don't want to work. This morning I had the thought that I noticed that. I thought, oh, I don't really feel like writing this morning. Another technique you can use is to thank your mind when you have a thought like I have no motivation shows up for you. You can respond with thank you mind for that thought. It's recognizing, first of all, that it's a thought and you're dropping the struggle. The thought has less and less power when you just treat it as a thought. Hello thought. Thank you mind for this thought. It recognizes that your heart beats and your brain thinks. Your brain is always going to think. And what we want to do is focus on the action we want to take. That's important to us and focus less on thoughts. Another thing you can do is name the story. I love this one. You can label any recurring thoughts. Perhaps it's procrastination. Oh, here's the I'm procrastinating story again. You just kind of have a little light hearted poke at it. Oh, here's that story again. It's reducing that thought's authority by calling it a story. It really is fiction. These thoughts that go through our head are not facts. They're just stories we're telling. Now, you can also visualize your thoughts, and you can imagine them in your mind and of course, put them on paper. So you imagine your thoughts as leaves on a stream. You're just lounging by a lovely stream. You hear the sound of the water and a leaf goes by and you just drop that thought onto the leaf. Ah! There goes the procrastination leaf. Ah! There goes the lazy leaf. Ah, there goes the unmotivated leaf. And you can really start to see the flow of your thoughts. And your thoughts all just keep going when you don't hang on to one particular thought. If you're really holding close to that thought that you're a procrastinator and that's who you are, you're really clinging to it. You will hardly allow space in your brain for other thoughts and no observation that. Procrastination is just a word that your brain keeps mulling over in acceptance and commitment therapy. It's called act for a reason. It's about action doing stuff that feels important to you. So act anyway is another technique. It's really noticing that action will bring the motivation. Like that quote from Picasso doesn't work the other way around. You act in alignment with your goals and you can do that while you're thinking I'm unmotivated or I am procrastinating. You can work through your to do list while your brain is thinking about procrastination. They're completely unrelated tasks, and the pleasure is great when you are doing something, and then you feel motivated to continue and finally externalizing your thoughts. I think writing them down as if they were said by a character. And you can imagine, oh, this is the um. Grumpy person on the corner telling me I'm unmotivated and you can draw out these characters. I've written about these characters in art techniques in lots of different locations. There's a whole cool exercise I came up with that's really about creating characters that are not you. They're just these characters. They're like playing a part in your brain and they show up on repeat. There's some examples of it in the Art therapy and post-traumatic stress disorder book, and I've written about it other places. It's just creating a character. You can do this in your mind, but so much better. If you create a character, you can draw out these characters, give them lines of dialogue that you often hear inside your head. You can draw them. You can make them out of clay. So many options. Remember, with Act therapy, it's action. The goal of diffusion is not to eliminate these thoughts, it's to just change your relationship with them so they're no longer controlling if you take action or you don't. Thoughts about procrastination can happen while you're taking action on what feels really important to you. So let me know what you think about this conversation related to motivation. If you're a person who struggles with thoughts about motivation, laziness, or procrastination, I hope it helped you to think about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. The attribution theory of motivation. And remember, the most high motivation thing you can say to yourself is to look at your success and attribute it to internal, stable and controllable factors. Have a wonderful rest of your day and I look forward to speaking with you in the next episode.